


Mirrors and Smoke

by Enigel



Category: From Eroica with Love, The Sandman
Genre: Crossover, Other, between character study and navel-gazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-12
Updated: 2008-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-02 02:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Enigel/pseuds/Enigel





	Mirrors and Smoke

Lord Gloria watches himself in the mirror. He always likes what he sees, whether it's a bright spring day full with possibilities, and his curls are shining, complimented by the lively colours of his garments, or a dull, uninspired winter day, when his lowered eyelashes guard the fetching melancholy of his romantic profile.

He never fails to be enticed by the sight the mirror shows him; only sometimes the mirror seems too big, as he's standing in front of it alone and _wants_, and he feels the hook of desire bite the flesh of spirit, in a way that desire has never felt before.__

Then an idea bubbles in his mind like a butterfly in winter - a prank for the Major or a medieval fantasy - and the moment passes, and he's smiling at himself. It's still just him in the mirror, but the space is full again.

* * *

The air is heavy with cigarette smoke and silence; cigarette butts and ashes spill over from the ashtray like dead lava.

"This one keeps himself well away from mirrors, sister-brother, and he rejects everything you are."

"As if that makes any difference," his sibling says with smooth disdain. "Try to hide him in the folds of your mantle, brother mine, but one day he will look, and my twin and I will be ready for him. And when they fall..."

Desire gazes at Dream sidewise, thin lips curled in a taunting smile.

"Sometimes when you fall you fly," the Dream King thinks, studying the gloomy pale face of the sleeper. Dark hair frames it, like a dreamcatcher full with dried up secrets and amber-glued wishes. The dreams are just between him and the dreamer.

* * *

In a garden that's nowhere on Earth and everywhere in the world, paths fork and cross. A rose vine and a wire rope unfold, twist and twine, sometimes away from each other, sometimes so tight together that one's finger would bleed, were he foolish enough to try and disentangle them. There is no mortal to attempt this in the garden, there's only him.

A tall, hooded silhouette, from which all the paths in his garden seem to spring forth or converge to, even if they never touch at all; he neglects none and favours none.


End file.
